01-04MAR14 - Houma, LA (fat tuesday & departure)

Saturday, 01MAR, Dan's new cell phone crapped-out.  The Verizon store decided it was not a "warranty" issue & Dan needed to claim it against the cell phone insurance (can you say $100 deductible).  Dan decided he would send Corrie back Monday to "deal" with the issue.  The day was capped with Joe & Tasha having a crawfish boil for family & friends!

Sunday we spent most of the day by gathering everything up from Joe house & Rebecca's house that belonged to us for packing the RV in prep for our departure on Ash Wednesday.   The kids & grandkids took in a daytime Mardi Gras parade, which we skipped.  Then everyone met at Olive Garden for dinner after the Mardi Gras parade.

 

Monday Dan started working on installing our new "house" batteries that we picked up last week in New Orleans.  What should have been a two hour job, ended up being almost six hours.  First, the battery tray wouldn't slide out for easy access.  This meant Dan had to not only remove the four house batteries, but the two starting batteries also!  Since we are talking over 500 pounds of batteries, having a slide out battery tray is almost essential.

 

After fixing the battery tray, Dan installed all six batteries; only to discover one major grounding cable was four inches too short for the new taller house batteries:(!  After trying different arrangements, Dan finally got one that worked & saved us from having to buying an expensive, heavy duty cable.  The funny thing our original "house" batteries were four 12v batteries, the new ones are four 6v batteries; but we now have 50% more power capacity!

While doing this Dan was smoking/BBQ'ing a pork boston butt for a pulled pork dinner with Joe, Tasha, Rebecca, Raymond, Jaxson & Mason.  So at the end of the day he smelled like engine oil & wood smoke.  Oh yeah, Corrie got Dan's phone replaced at no cost!

 

Mardi Gras day (aka Fat Tuesday) Corrie headed over to Joe's to help remove the new "stain" from the concrete floor; because Lowe's sold Joe the wrong product!  Meanwhile Dan was able to get $20 for our old RV batteries.  Dan then spent most of the day loading the Toad & RV for tomorrow's departure.  Later in the day we all met at Joe & Tasha's for dinner & games.  Dinner was crawfish etoufee prepared by Tasha from the leftover crawfish from Saturday's boil.  We then played Taboo.  As usual there were small disagreements over rules & scoring.  Eventually all was resolved & play commenced.  The women's team won one round, & the guys won one.  To maintain peace & relationships, play was stopped in a tie:)!